1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to multimedia file storage, access and retrieval. More specifically, the invention relates to systems and methods for creating multimedia file libraries from which individual multimedia files can be easily accessed and played.
2. General Background and State of the Art
There is strong interest in entertaining during vehicle travel. However, these are difficulties that are not usually present when entertaining and travel are engaged in separately. One particular problem involves safety. A driver needs to be able to select and play a song in his car while driving, without having to significantly divert his attention from driving. This problem multiplies as the number of selections increases.
It is also desirable to allow a driver to create his own set of entertainment offerings. However, a user programmable feature is often complex to operate. This can also increase the safety concerns discussed above. Examples of these are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,625,608 to Grewe and U.S. Pat. No. 6,232,539 to Looney. Both include a plurality of separate buttons, some configured for user-programmable features, some configured for user-selection features, and still others configured for playback features. The control taught by Grewe includes soft keys for selecting categories of music, musical artists or specific songs. It requires clicking through multiple selection levels to make a selection and to then play the selection. Looney includes selector buttons to which song files are mapped and which are configured to subsequently select a song, and a separate button to play the selected song. All of the different buttons, with different features, are difficult for a driver to safely operate while driving his car.